Boswell and most other polemicists promoting homoeroticism contend that the Hebrew word '' tōʻēḇā '', usually translated '' abomination '' as in Lv. 18: 22, seldom refers to something intrinsically evil, like rape or theft, ... but something which is ritually unclean for Jews, like eating pork or printing marks on one's flesh, or against mixed fabrics.

But Shelley's most intriguing turn to concepts of identity to explain Greek homoeroticism is his connection of paedophilia with puberty: "If we consider the facility with which certain phenomena connected with sleep, at the age of puberty, associate themselves with those images which are the objects of our waking desires; and even that in some persons of an exalted state of sensibility that a similar process may take place in reverie, it will not be difficult to conceive the almost involuntary consequence of a state of abandonment in the society of a person of surpassing attractions" (222).

[1] Those who hold most strongly to the traditional position see the issue of homosex (also referred to as homoeroticism) [2] being dealt with as part of the laws and doctrines on sexual partners which are universally and directly applicable in all cultural contexts from the time they were given.

Historical / traditional scholarship evidences that the Bible contains laws which prohibit homosex (same gender sexual relations, also referred to as homoeroticism or homogenital relations), and which are as universal and immutable as laws against illicit heterosexual partners are shown to be (or even more so), as belonging in the same class.